THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22373, 21 September 1934, Page 3

THE INDUSTRIAL WORLD

NEWS AND NOTES By J. T. Paul. There seems to bo. no doubt that a strong, single-minded dictatorship ie the easiest way of using science in national life, but no, opposition can be tolerated. To us English people it seems a very hard price to pay, and, however much our theoretical reformers may toy with the idea of dictatorship, it would not survive here. We have to solve the ■ problem on some other lines, but we must face the fact that in re--1 fusing the simple way we are giving ourselves a hard task.— Sir John Russell, director of Rothensted Agricultural Experimental • Station, at . St. Martin’s in the Fields. Church, London. CHRISTCHURCH TRAMWAYMEN. The Labour Tramway Board in the Cathedral City has encountered another obstacle in its rearrangement of the staff. The board has decided to give further consideration to its proposal that the roster of trolly bus drivers should be changed every three months, and the roster making the changes which were to come into force this week has been suspended till the board can go into the position again. The Tramway Board’s contention was that new drivers had to be trained, because the board would be putting more trolly buses on the road, particularly to Richmond. It therefore proposed that present drivers should become senior tramway motormen and that their, places should be taken by learners. This, however, would have meant that the present drivers would have lost 2d an hour in pay, and it is stated that they might have appealed to the Appeal Board if the Tramway Board had gone on with its proposal, as’the move involved loss of pay or status. Under the by-laws of the board, however, appeals must first be made to the management. It is believed that this has been done, resulting in the decision of the board to postpone action meantime. The trolly bus drivers concerned were “loyalists ” —men who stayed on the job at the time of the strike. IRONWORKERS’ STRIKE. The strike involving over 1200 ironworkers resulting from the dismissal of an employee at Lysaght’s galvanised iron works at Newcastle was reviewed by the Industrial Court at Sydney, and was the subject of some outspoken comments by the presiding judge, who cancelled the award of the mill hands, on strike. Mr Justice Cantor said the recent award was made on the 1 undertaking of the parties that all matters in dispute would be settled by conciliation or arbitration, and that no stoppage of work would take place. The award came into operation on August 13 last, but certain provisions relating to rates of pay were made retrospective to December G, 1933, The strike took place 10 days after the award became operative. The men had refused to return to work, regardless of the law and their own pledged word, and that of the union. By their action they had forfeited all right to the award, (and to the protection which the award afforded. • . The cable news yesterday contained an intimation that the men had decided to return to work. /> ‘ ■— THE EMPLOYERS’ VIEW. “The longer industry operates under the . new conditions of compulsory conciliation and optional arbitration, the more apparent does it become that such a method can be attended with success from the point of view of'both parties and without the industrial strife which lias on many occasions been predicted should New Zealand ever throw over its compulsory arbitration,” states the annual report of the Canterbury Employers’' Association.' “If is still apparent, particularly in the discussion at certain Conciliation Councils, tthat the representatives of the employers and of the workers have still much to learn in the art and technique of industrial negotiation. There is no doubt that the compulsory arbitration which reigned for over 30 years in New_ Zealand was a-hindrance, to true industrial negotiation, such as exists in Great Britain and other of the principal European States, and also in the United States of America, . “It is admitted that in the past the majority of disputes in New Zealand have been settled in Conciliation Council, but it is a fact that they have been settled at a point at which both parties agreed either openly or in their own mind that the court would give similar judgment should the dispute be referred to it. Thus Conciliation Councils were not, where agreements were reached, the reflection of true conciliation, but rather a reflection of previous judgments, and decisions of # the Court of Arbitration. There are already indications that the parties are prepared to throw overboard certain of the stereotyped forms of negotiation whicli have existed'in the past, and to treat each dispute on the facts which - can be claimed as being truly relevant to the particular industry under discussion,” The report adds that 36 industrial disputes were handled by the office during the year, this number being less than in the previous year. In the majority of cases agreements were reached in , Conciliation Council, although the engineering industry, the private hotels, and the motor and horse drivers, were still not operating under awards. One particular idispnte in which an agreement was ultimately reached was the dispute relating to the tea room and restaurant employees for both the Canterbury and Westland districts./ For a number of years the employers desired certain amendments to the restrictive conditions which were placed by the Court of Arbitration upon the regulation of employ, raent in the pantries and kitchen? of tea rooms and restaurants. The agreement which was ultimately, reached in this in--dustry embodied almost entirely the conditions which the employers originally desired. To obtain this agreement it was, of course, necessary for the employers to make concessions, particularly in so far as wage rates were concerned. However, the success which has finally attended these particular negotiations should prove that it was possible to, obtain satisfactory awards even without compulsory recourse to the Court of Arbitration, and without any condition of chaos existing even temporarily in an industry. In the case of the Dominion painters’ award, the emnloyers’ assessors in_ Conciliation Council agreed to refer this dispute to the Arbitration Court for settlement. The dispute was watched > with special interest throughout the Dominion, as this was the first complete industrial dispute with which the Court of Arbitration had had to deal since the amendment to the Act. In its judgment the court fixed a rate of pay for painters at Is lid per hour. These employees had in the past always been paid the skilled rate fixed by the Court of Arbitration, which, following the 1925 pronouncement, was 2s 3d per hour. ' The fact that the court gave _ judgment along the lines it did, which is approximately a 35 per cent, reduction on the rate which ruled in 1930, has probably accounted for a number of agreements being reached in other skilled industries throughout the Dominion and on a similar basis.

of Representatives. One of them told. Labour-candidate Smedley that they could win Wakefield, but that they would vote for Labour’s Senate team. Optimism does not win elections, as the Douglas Credit people will soon find oat; neither theories, no matter how beautiful they may appear to people who profess them. It is votes, and votes only, that .win elections. The Douglas Social Credit people have repudiated the candidates selected and run by the Douglas Credit Political Union. This was clone by an article in the press, and by letter to the individual candidates. This has not dampened the ardour of the aspiring politicians run by the D.C.P.U.. The A.L.P. and the D.C.P.U. have arranged an exchange of preferences in all seats where the latter are running candidates." STRIKES AND JAR. Strikes are often spoken of as “ industrial warfare.” Those who use the term probably do not realise how actually close is the analogy or how much it suggests as to the possible means of achieving industrial peace (writes Tully Nettleton in the Christian Science Monitor. In the first place strikes and war are ranch alike in the ways they start. Each begins where all the established contact of peaceful negotiations have failed _of have been overstrained. Industrial strife, like military operation, is what Bismarck sardonically called “an extension of diplomacy” which seeks to gain its ends, by force. That force is not always physical. In fact, in a true strike or lock-out it is solely economic pressure. But like the economic wars between nations, the.bargaining tug-of-war between employers and workers readily becomes so'grim that it often shades into violence —without either side knowing exactly when or how —so frequently that the public has come to associate violence with nearly all of the more serious strikes. Like some wars these more violent strikes start usually from a sense of oppression, a feeling of grievance too deeply nurtured, or 100 long held, to yield at once to conciliation. Occasionally, the oppression is that of trade union abuses which drive employers to take up the “open shop” front; more often it is the oppression that treats labour as a mere commodity and considers,any profit proper which it can make by charging the highest possible price and paying the lowest possible wage. Whether the grievance be that of a discharged miner with six hungry children at home, or of a large millowner faced with the ruin of his business by impossible union demands, the very instincts of self-preservation are aroused; and with them a host of unreasoning emotions. The disputants not only distrust each-other, but for a while distrust any suggestion of arbitration. THE CORPORATIVE STATE. The meaning of the corporative State was examined by Mr L. K. Munro, lecturer in law at Auckland University College, in an address given to the Auckland branch of the Economic Society of Australia and New Zealand. He illustrated the significance of this type of national organisation by reference to its operation in' various forms in several different European countries at present, Mr Munro quoted the definition of the State as a nation organised for action under legal rules. The corporative State, he said, wag a new type of constitutional system, in which the emand the employed, grouped into mixed national corporations, played a predominant part in the government of the country. In the view of Duguit, the great French jurist, the State was a central agency for the performance of the public services. As these grew in number and complexity they must be carried out by decentralisation and federal syndicalism. Theyques-' tidn arose whether the parliamentary system could be replaced -by the corporative system without the State ceasing to be democratic.

The corporative State implied a new conception of the rights and duties of individuals within the State. The interests of every class in the community had to be borne in mind, and in this it differed from Socialist trade unionism and from cartels and trusts. The speaker outlined the organisation, of the national council of corporations and its functions, and said that economic planning could be carried out only in a system having discipline and a free expression in economic life. The corporative State gave these two.

The corporations in Italy were not independent economic organisations, 'i but Were simply State institutions. The members of the corporations were the officials of the Fascist party. The system in Portugal theoretically united corporative elements with universal suffrage, and so created a combination of the democratic with the corporative system. But there was dictatorship, and the corporations were simply organs of, the State. Mr Munro also. explained the position in Belgium and in Austria. Amori" objection’s to the; corporative system Mr Munro mentioned that all plans were arbitrary whenever they came to the distribution of seats. There was no criterion to determine how many representatives this ,or that corporation should return. Even in ejections, which were purely social in character, political elements plaved the "chief part. The fundamental* idea of the representation of interests was false. Representation of interests was inconsistent with the normal functioning of the representative system. „ „ ~ Among the desirable features of the system were the authority it gave and its planned economy. Corporative interests were, however, incompatible with the system of representation' by universal suffrage. ■ /